Beyond Control
by SwoopingDragon
Summary: Choosing control was meant to be the end. It wasn't; just as the catalyst could project a holographic form, Shepard finds herself back in the Normandy in appearance, if not in body. Reunited with her crew and with those who love her, Shepard seems to have found a perfect solution. But as well-intentioned as Shepard is, can anyone deal with the power of control and remain unchanged?


Shepard surveyed her options, trying to ignore the bleeding shrapnel wound in her stomach. It was always a trade-off with this sort of thing, wasn't it? None of the decisions were ever easy, but most were clearer cut than this one. Commit genocide or risk a future war. Save one friend or another. Do it or don't do it.

Synthesis wasn't an option. Shepard was getting along just fine with more synthetic bits in her than in the average bottle of krogan alcohol, but forcing it on every living being in the galaxy… no, it was out of the question. And to destroy the reapers once and for all, she'd be destroying every other synthetic being along with them. The geth and the quarians were coexisting for the first time in centuries; what was the point of avoiding genocide in the past if she was just going to stoop to it now? Besides, EDI was her friend, and she was about as synthetic a life form as they come. _If I've got to die, so be it, but I'm sick of sacrificing friends._

No, there was only one option. It was risky; could she trust herself to have this sort of power? She'd finally wrapped her mind around being a hero, but this was getting dangerously close to being a god. Would she be able to adapt to the times? Would she even be the same person?

It didn't matter. None of the options were good, but a little uncertainty was the price you had to pay for avoiding genocide. The galaxy was already going to be swimming with rachni, krogan, and geth- what were reapers but another potential time bomb in the mix? _Not sure what recipe calls for quite this many time bombs, but I'm nothing if not obedient._

 _Guess I'm nothing then. Always thought I was a good, obedient soldier in the Alliance, but Cerberus shattered that illusion well enough._

Of course, now she was doing what the Illusive Man had wanted all along. But that didn't mean it wasn't right. Even an Omega twilight is right twice a day.

Shepard hobbled down the platform. The war stretched out before her. The war to end all wars, or so it seemed. _But that's probably how the soldiers back on Earth in 1918 felt. It never really ends. But we have to keep trying._

It figures she would die like this; exploded, downed, but still hobbling on forward. Her stomach felt like Garrus' attempt at human cooking had been weaponized and fired directly at it. For some reason she found it perversely satisfying that she might be about to die anyway. _Makes my sacrifice feel more like a bargain. I never was a very good bargain hunter. For all that I told every shop on the Citadel they were my favorite, I know for a fact that they were overcharging me for those model ships. And that's not even starting on all those damn fish._

She reached the platform. The two pillars glowed with blue light, and instinctively she activated her biotics, the colors meshing, swirling like smoke through the air. She reached out a cautious hand and touched one of the pillars. It hurt, sparks of electricity flowing between her and the machine. Shepard gritted her teeth. It was alright if it hurt; death was supposed to hurt.

A thought struck her and she couldn't help but laugh, the grin stretching across her face like she was back watching an extremely drunk Joker try to fight Glyph for hitting on EDI again. She looked back at the catalyst, the little ghost boy interface not even bothering to face her.

"Assuming direct control!" she called, and grabbed the machine with both hands.

The burn started in her fingers, the sort of aching heat you get in your implant from overexerting yourself with your biotics. It spread up her arms and to her torso. She could feel her skin cracking and peeling. She was burning up from the inside out. She smiled, thinking of Mordin.

 _Had to be me. Someone else might have_

The last ashes fell to the floor, and the catalyst's ghostly form flickered and disappeared. Commander Shepard was no more.

* * *

Garrus stared at the plaque in his hands. Commander Shepard. He had plugged the info into the plaque maker himself. _How sad is it that this ship has its very own machine just for printing out memorial plaques? Not as sad as the fact that we clearly need one._ The machine had looked up her file and wanted to put her full name on it, but Garrus had demanded that it just be Commander. _She always hated her prenomen. Something about reminding her too much of her past. Also, I'm pretty sure it was some kind of flower._

His hands displayed a presence of mind he didn't really feel and placed the plaque in the place of honor, right in the middle of the wall of the fallen. One of his fingers lingered on the plaque slightly too long, tracing the curve of the first letter in Shepard. The indent he felt didn't match up with the lettering he saw. The plaque maker was a human machine.

He stepped back. Somebody put a hand on his shoulder. He didn't feel up to either looking to see who it was or to shrug it off. He just kept looking at that plaque, the translator implants in his eyes replacing the human -English, was it?- lettering with Vactan, the standard turian alphabet.

He'd temporarily disabled his translator once, to hear what she actually sounded like when talking in her own language. The voice had been the same, unquestionably so- he was always impressed with how well the translators managed it- but the words sounded so ridiculous he'd almost fallen to the ground with laughter. Then he'd had her do the same thing while he talked, and then they were laughing together. When they'd both turned their translators on again, she told him that he sounded like a belt sander eating a lion. He still wasn't entirely sure what either of those things was; he imagined a belt sander was sort of a smaller scale Earth version of a Thresher Maw, and that sounded pretty badass, so he didn't particularly care what a lion was.

And now she was gone. He wasn't sure whether he was numb or if everything just hurt so much he couldn't remember what it felt like not to hurt. _Twice. That's twice I've had to go on living after she dies saving us all._ Some part of him, no, scratch that, all of him wished he could have been there with her at the end, held her hand as they blew up the world in a blaze of glory. It wasn't fair. It wasn't fair that everyone he cared about died for causes that he was left to clean up the mess of. Again and again, he was the only survivor. _And isn't that just the way of things? Don't pity the dead, but pity the living._ Well, he was sick of life pitying him.

He didn't even know how she died. The Normandy had crash-landed on some remote jungle world, and whatever happened, the system's mass relay was non-functional. Traynor had done something he didn't really understand with the ship's quantum communication pair generators- those weren't the words, but it was something like that- that let them listen in to galactic com traffic, even though she was still working her way up to getting a signal out.

Like kids clustered around a vid unit, they'd listened to reports of how instead of arming up to shoot the reapers, the crucible had exploded, with Shepard inside. _Okay, so maybe we know how she died, but I'm wracking my brains for why._ It had worked, though; the reapers may not have exploded like the crucible or even the mass relays- it turned out their issue wasn't unique- but they had fallen onto whatever world they'd been nearest. From what they could understand, something automatic in the reapers' programming had slowed their descent before they impacted with the strength of several thousand ship to ship nukes, and they landed with minimal damage. But after that they fell eerily silent. A galaxy littered with derelict reapers, an oversized graveyard.

 _Hopefully they're a little more derelict than the last one we used that adjective on._ _We had a hell of a time getting out of that one. Lucky break for us that Legion was there to save our sorry asses. Of course, luck can only get you so far before it runs out. And Legion is dead too. A whole galaxy saved from extinction, and the only casualties are the individuals who make it worth saving._ He laughed bitterly. _Story of my life there._

He knew he should say something. That's what you were supposed to do at funerals, after all. Give speeches about the deceased, and whoever cries the most gets the moral victory of knowing that they cared more than anyone else. He can't bring himself to do it. _Does make me the winner or the loser? Bad question. We're all the loser._ He hadn't spoken at her first funeral either.

The hand dropped off his shoulder, and he took that as confirmation that he'd stood there long enough to fulfill whatever sort of quota system this process ran on.

"I need a drink," he muttered, and left the rest of them behind.

 _Not everyone dies alone, but everyone grieves alone._

* * *

It was strange. You never thought about where your consciousness was housed until it was evicted. Billions of tiny cells that made up a brain, and a brain made up life. Not one of the cells was conscious on its own, but once you put them together, they were enough for a personality to live within them.

When you really thought about it, the reapers shouldn't be any different. Except that they were. For one thing, they were bigger. A lot bigger. And further apart; you couldn't drive a dreadnought between two brain cells, and you certainly couldn't do that and live to consider the feeling afterwards. And most importantly, the brain cells she was residing in already had thoughts of their own, thoughts too big and ancient and too damn complicated for her to understand, even when they were lodged inside her own mind. _I'm a soldier, not a...what kind of profession even prepares you for something like this? I bet even Liara wouldn't know where to begin with a mind this much bigger than anything we can really imagine._

She didn't sit idle. She had chosen control because it was the least destructive option, but also because it was the most functional. She hadn't expected the mass relays to be destroyed, but she had the manner of fixing them, and she wasn't the sort to ignore an opportunity simply because she hadn't planned for it. _Our plans never worked anyway._ Either she knew how to fix the relays or the reapers did. Maybe those were the same thing now. Either way, the reapers began the galaxy's largest repair job. It wouldn't happen overnight, but it would happen.

But she didn't have to supervise directly, the reaper fleet working on the task more or less without her direct input. In the absence of people to talk to or targets to shoot, she watched. The galaxy was a big and fascinating place, after all. The reapers had sensors, stretching out to impossible ranges that made her wonder again how she'd managed to survive them, even with the whole galaxy behind her. _Well, survive. Difficult word, when applied to my particular life experiences._ And where they didn't have sensors, they could tap into them.

And so, on a distant, undeveloped, probably undiscovered world- the jungle was too lush for any species to have discovered it and not colonized immediately- the sensors found the Normandy. It was almost effortless to break into the in-ship sensors that EDI used to keep an eye on the place. Shepard had a feeling EDI wouldn't mind. There was somebody she needed to check up on.

She looked in the main battery first, but he wasn't there. _Maybe he's finally calibrated the guns to his satisfaction. That would be the way of things, now that the Normandy's guns are only useful to get caught on trees when Joker tries to fly us out of this jungle._

 _Them. Fly them out of this jungle._

She scanned the ship floor by floor until she finally found him in the Port Observation Deck. _I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. I know how much I would be drinking right now if I were in his place. Of course, I had enough cybernetics in me to effectively double what my liver could handle._

Garrus wasn't cybernetically enhanced, but it was amazing what giving up can make you think is appealing. As she watched, he tossed back another glass of whatever turian rotgut came in the purple bottle. He grimaced as it went down, but when his eyes opened again, there was at least the shadow of satisfaction behind them. She knew the feeling-she'd done it after Ashley, Mordin, Thane- but it was different to see it on someone else. It looked bad.

She had known that she was sacrificing all this when she died, but she didn't think she would have to be around to see it. _Selfish thought. The one to die first really is the lucky one. I guess this way we're both unlucky._

She wanted nothing more than to reach out, tap him on the shoulder or put a hand over his visor. _He always pretended to get mad when I did that. He'd rant about how long it takes to polish a truly quality visor and just how hard it is to get human fingerprints off of things. I don't know what he does to his, but back when I was wearing a visor, it wasn't much work._

Shepard thought of the catalyst pointing his translucent, ghostlike hand at her as he spoke. She stretched out a hand she didn't have anymore to reach through to Garrus. She could almost see it, calloused and repeatedly broken knuckles resting on his shoulder.

And then, with a jolt of surprise, she realized that she could see it.

* * *

Garrus stared into his purple alcohol-filled glass like it was going to give him answers. It wasn't. Well, maybe that was just jumping to conclusions. Just because the last three hadn't, didn't mean this one wouldn't be the answer.

He downed it. _Nope. No answers here._

 _Well, might as well try one more._

"Garrus," said an impossible voice from behind him as he poured out the next cup. His head whirled to face it and he dropped the bottle, purple liquid spilling everywhere.

His ears hadn't deceived him. _Normally I admire honesty, but in this case I would have been willing to let it slide, ears._ Standing in the middle of the room, arm outstretched, was Shepard. Or rather, a holographic representation of her, even if it was full size.

He picked up the bottle before the last few ounces could spill out and took a swig directly from it, addressing his complaint to the empty air behind the bar instead of looking at...it.

"Alright, ha ha, I get it. You dug the Shepard VI out of the processing banks, updated it a little to recognize me, and remotely activated it to get a rise out of me. Well, consider me risen."

 _That didn't even make sense. You know what would fix that? More booze._ He took another swig from the bottle. _This sort of thing would be so much easier if I had lips. Humans don't know how good they have it. Or then again, maybe they do. There certainly seem to be a disproportionately high number of human alcoholics._

The VI appeared on the other side of the bar, facing him. He blinked. _I didn't know VI's could do that. Some sort of floating, cloaked projector? Whoever built this has got a serious bone to pick with me. Either that or they think in some twisted way that this is going to help me cope._

"I'm not a VI," said the VI. "I know you. You're Garrus Vakarian, you're drinking yourself into an honestly impressive stupor after my funeral, and as usual, you're being too hard on yourself."

"If somebody made you to talk to me, maybe they think I'm not being hard enough on myself." He put the bottle totally vertical, the last drops falling into his mouth. "Fine, I'll bite. If you're not a VI, what are you? A ghost, maybe? Hallucination I would believe, though normally they wait until I'm at least a few minutes past plastered to start showing up."

"I'm Commander Shepard."

He barked out a mirthless laugh and tried to take another swig out of the bottle before remembering that it was all gone. He tossed it directly through the hologram, and it shattered on the wall on the other side.

"Yeah, that's what the last VI said, right before I clicked on it again and it said it destroys little data sacks like me on its way to real bugs. Whoever programmed you has a bit of an obsession problem, though."

She was shaking her head, an almost authentically disappointed expression crinkling her brows. _Spirits, whoever programmed this really should see a psychiatrist or something, this is getting scarily accurate. Is Chambers dead? She probably is. Most people seem to be, these days._

"Alright, fine. I don't know why I'm talking to you, but the only alternative is talking to my drink, and it only ever has anything to say the next morning." He crossed his arms. "If you're not a VI, prove it."

She- _It_ \- sighed. "Alright, Garrus, I'll prove it. But know that this is going to hurt us both."

With an exaggeratedly pained expression, Shepard pulled both hands into fists and raised them in front of her...and began to shake them. Her hips followed after, moving vaguely from side to side as she turned around in a jerky circle. He couldn't contain an astonished chuckle. _She's dancing. I've only ever seen one person move with rhythm that bad, and I'm pretty sure you couldn't program a VI to move quite that pathetically._

He stared at her, head pounding with too many emotions for him to classify them. _Good ones, mostly. Happiness? More than a little confusion, but then happiness and confusion do tend to go together when you go up against odds like I tend to. Always be pleasantly surprised to still be breathing, that's the Vakarian way._

"It's you," he croaked at last. He wasn't sure whether it was a question or not.

She nodded. "It's me." She leaned an elbow on the bar. Or at least, close to the bar.

Garrus pointed. "You're off by a few centimeters."

Shepard looked, moving her holographic head to see. Habit, he supposed. "Yeah. Damn graphics projectors. I can't get my hair to stop clipping either."

 _Clipping? I thought clipping was something humans were supposed to do to their hair? Spirits, this is all too complicated for me. Ten minutes ago, everything was simple. Unbearably awful, but simple. Also, I'm way too drunk for this._

"Well, Shepard, I can't fault your sense of dramatic timing. A little warning would have been nice. At least tell me where you're going to miraculously come back from the dead next time, won't you?" he said.

Shepard smirked, eyes lighting up with that same shit-eating grin she always seemed to wear when talking to him. _I tend to bring that out in people. I must have one of those faces._

"You said to meet you at the bar. Well, here's the bar."

* * *

Garrus called an emergency meeting, all crew to attend. Shepard appeared. There were screams, tears, and a few projectiles that flew directly through Shepard's holographic form to hit amazed viewers on the other end of the impromptu circle. In a voice calmer than she felt, Shepard explained everything. They had questions, and she answered them to the best of her ability, which wasn't particularly extensive; she barely knew what she was doing other than that it seemed to be working.

And then, amazingly, they accepted it. They had all seen the footage of the crucible blowing up, known that their commander had exploded along with it, but they trusted her. She was struck with an absurd impulse to hug all of them. She restrained herself; even if they had decided to trust her, nobody wanted a hologram reaching through their chest.

She wasn't entirely sure who initially suggested it, but somehow they came to a consensus- her holographic mouth quirked, thinking of Legion- that Shepard's existence had to be kept a secret, at least until the reapers finished reconstructing the mass relays. Considering the fact that their communications were down as long as the mass relays were, the decision did little more than make their inaction feel pleasantly intentional, but all the same, none of them were too reluctant to put off the announcement that the savior of the galaxy was now in control of the indestructible monsters that she had saved it from. They had a month until the relays were repaired. Not long enough to get used to the idea, but long enough to start.

* * *

The elevator doors opened on the captain's quarters. Garrus had been moved in with her in all but official berthings during their last mission, but after she died, he'd gone back to sleeping on the little cot that folded out of the wall in the main battery. He supposed the room had only been empty for a few days at most, but it felt like cracking open a long-sealed Prothean ruin all the same. _And I'm sure those damned fish are dead already, she only ever seemed to buy the beautiful fragile ones._

Shepard followed behind him as he went and sat down on her- _Our?-_ bed. She was attempting to simulate a walk, but it was coming out a little closer to a half-march, half glide. _Like a hanar playing soldier._

He spent a long moment looking at her, taking in the fierce eyes and the mostly faded scars, everything shaded a slightly buzzing blue.

"You know, for someone whose funeral I've been to twice, you look good, Shepard. Still, looking is fine, but I miss being able to touch… That came out different than I thought it would."

Shepard laughed, the sound coming out only slightly tinny. "Nothing to be ashamed of, Garrus. Once you go human you never go back."

Garrus rocked on his feet. "Not exactly the catchiest of jingles. Good thing you went into galaxy saving, because you're a disaster in marketing."

"Shut up. It rhymes in English."

Garrus smiled. "Oh does it? Because I'm feeling pretty tempted to go ask Joker and see for myself."

EDI's voice emitted from the corner. "In English, the words human and back do not rhyme, and have meter inappropriate for the saying Shepard is paraphrasing."

Shepard glared at the communications port. "Are you eavesdropping on your commander?"

"Slash robot overlord," added Garrus. He was mostly kidding.

"I apologize, Shepard. My sensors are installed all over the ship for convenience. I can attempt to ignore readings, but it is akin to an organic humming to tune out background noise. Often inadvisable when controlling both my own body and life support."

Shepard crossed her arms. "Hmph. I thought I was supposed to be the omniscient AI presence around here," she complained, sitting down in the chair. She had actually aimed it right so that her backside was touching the plastic this time, although one of her elbows did go through part of the arm. He decided not to mention it; she was putting on a good face, but he knew her better than anyone, and he knew she wasn't adjusting to her second inadvertent resurrection as well as she was pretending.

 _Still, asking EDI for help adjusting might be smart. She's the only person I know who's made the jump between being a sentient hologram and having a body. She did it the other way from Shepard, of course, but there still might be some overlap._

 _Wait. That's it._

"EDI, do you have the schematics that Cerberus used to build your body?"

"I do. The design schematics for Dr. Eva Core were deemed necessary to be available to her in the event that she was damaged and needed to self repair."

His heart was racing now. "And could you build another one from scratch?"

Shepard's expression hadn't changed, but he knew she had worked it out. _Amazing that she didn't think of it before I did, really. That's what being a biotic instead of a tecchie gets you, you expect to be able to do everything yourself and don't think of workarounds when it's not obvious. And here I am, gloating to myself again, like I'm the one who sacrificed myself and saved the whole damn galaxy._

EDI's body was downstairs, so she couldn't nod, but they heard it in her voice. "I can. I may have to cannibalize some materials from the non-essential functions on the Normandy, but it should be possible. Give me the order and two weeks."

Garrus looked at Shepard, but she still seemed to be processing. He turned to look at EDI's broadcast station.

"Do it."

* * *

Shepard appeared in the cockpit. It felt weird not to walk places where she wanted to go, but it was weirder to imitate walking when she knew perfectly well it was just another complicated vanity to keep track of. Still, one disadvantage of not having footsteps was that nobody ever knew when you got there. She cleared her throat.

Joker swivelled his chair around to face her. "Hey, Commander, now that we're handing out robot bodies to anyone who wants one, can I get on the list? Pretty sure robot legs don't break all the time."

"You sure? Because I'm pretty sure they couldn't get your beard right," said Shepard, putting her arms behind her back in a vain facsimile of military rest.

"Ooh, good catch, Commander. Yeah, I better not risk it. Hey, are you getting laser boobs installed in yours?" She just stared at him, and he shrugged. "What? That's what I would do."

EDI looked over from her station, where she appeared to be directly interfacing with the computer. Shepard could see the three dimensional outline of a human female form that looked familiar.

"Jeff has repeatedly attempted to convince me to modify my hardware to accommodate lasers in my chest. I fail to see the utility in such a function."

"Laser boobs are the utility!"

Shepard raised her hands in surrender. "I'll, uh, keep it in mind, Joker."

Joker closed his eyes and said dreamily, "So will I, Commander. So will I."

* * *

Specialist Traynor gasped in delight when Shepard appeared by her station. "Commander Shepard! Just the person I wanted so see. I've been thinking about how your projection works."

Shepard raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Any findings?"

"Generally, holographic projections are limited in range, generally only to a few specially built stations, like the garden variety omnitool or the places around the ship where EDI's mushroom head pops up. But you haven't been tethered at all, and look at you, you're even walking around! That's reaper tech, of course, but what I'm thinking is that something about the reapers' transmitters allows them to broadcast a sort of invisible haptic interface over long range, a hidden, mobile projection station. But unless you brought a reaper with you through this mass relay before it broke, that means it's projecting through lightyears, and all in real time. That's incredible! I'm hoping I can backtrace it and piggyback on the signal to get some messages back onto the extranet, maybe even activate a few military comm channels." She paused. "I'm sorry, look at me babbling on like this. You must think I'm pretty insensitive."

"No, it's good. You're not dancing around what I am, but you're treating me like a person. I appreciate that."

"Aren't you a person? You still seem like the Commander to me. Of course, if you really wanted me to believe it, you could always use your nigh-infinite reaper power to get me a new toothbrush. Or maybe a discount at Serrice Council, I've had my eye on a pretty nice new omnitool they're putting out."

Shepard smiled. "You get our comm links up and running with the rest of the galaxy, and you can have any omnitool you want."

Traynor smirked as she went back to work. "I'm holding you to that, Commander, but you won't regret it. Well, you might. I have expensive taste."

* * *

When Shepard got the transmission from EDI that the body was ready, the only people in the Normandy were EDI, Joker, and Shepard, everyone else temporarily distracted helping Cortez rescue his shuttle from the tangle of vines where Vega had taken it for an "emergency landing." Shepard suspected it wasn't an accident that EDI was handing over her handiwork while there weren't many observers; nobody knew that too many targeters spoil the firing solution more than EDI, who could run the ship by herself if she didn't think it would be rude to the engineers.

EDI had finished the body exactly fifteen minutes after she had predicted it would be ready. She claimed that she had needed to remove the acid jets Joker had secretly installed in various orifices. Joker didn't deny it.

"I'm telling you, Commander, you're going to regret it when some husk or ungodly monster creeps up on you and you don't have a belly button full of corrosive acid."

Shepard barely even heard him. She was too busy looking at the metallic body lying on the briefing table. It was her, or at least what she'd look like if someone made a statue out of her entirely out of hyperflexible, dull polished metal. But the dimensions looked right. _No wonder, I've had to wait long enough for scanners to clear me to open doors on my own ship that I'd be a little offended if there weren't a couple million highly detailed body scans lying around somewhere in the archives._

The eyes were closed, so Shepard couldn't tell whether they looked anything like her old ones, but EDI had gone above and beyond on the rest of the detail work. The hair, a simply but elegantly molded single piece, was formed into the simple military bun that she always wore on duty, which pretty much translated to just plain always. _Still, I'd better get some soft pillows if I can't ever take my bun out. Not that I sleep anymore, of course, but it's the principle of the thing._ Even the faint scars on her jaw were carefully replicated in intentionally dented metal. EDI had told her the name of the material she was using at least three times, but Shepard couldn't seem to hold on to the information.

"You may want to steer the reaper fleet to a non-critical location before attempting to take control, Shepard."

Joker faked a gasp and clapped a hand to his mouth. "Why, is this body going to make her go evil? Has it been your plan all along to delay the inevitable robot uprising until you can get something good with it? Do you plan on destroying all organics in a moment of explosive synthetic glory? Because if so, explode me last so I can watch; that sounds totally hot."

"Nothing so drastic, Jeff. You may remember the Normandy's systems shutting down for a period of one minute and fifty three seconds as I took control of the body of Dr. Eva Core. As this new body does not have previously installed hostile programming, it is unlikely Shepard will have any such difficulties. However, it is always wise to take precautions."

Shepard shrugged. "You know me. Cautious to a fault." She temporarily halted work on the relays, setting the reapers to simply orbit harmlessly until reactivated. "There. Now what do I do?"

"I do not know how best to describe it to you, Shepard. Perhaps the best analogue would be reaching out with a hand, although the hand in this case is your mind."

"That's great, babe, real simple," said Joker to EDI. "While you're at it, Commander, you might also want to imagine that you're an elcor tap dancer. Pretty much as helpful."

Shepard closed her eyes. _Meaningless, since my eyes aren't even real or what I'm seeing out of, but old habits die hard. As do old soldiers, not that I can really call myself old yet. Or ever, now._

In the end, she treated it like her biotics, reaching out with a part of her that wasn't tied to physical space and using it to exert control over some part of the world. She knew instantly that it had worked. Instead of seeing the entire room at once, she couldn't see any of it, at least not through her primary focus. _Of course. The eyes are still closed._

With effort, she found the command and blinked her eyes open. _My eyes. I have eyes again._

She turned to EDI, who was fixing her with a gentle smile while holding Joker up at the waist. Shepard's voice came out of the flexible, metallic mouth in her old tones, if very slightly modulated.

"Thank you, EDI."

* * *

Shepard walked into Liara's office. Her movements were still a little jerky, but they were already starting to smooth out. EDI had done a good job; the motion controls were intuitive.

"Ah, Shepard. I am glad that you are adapting well to your new form," said Liara, speaking from the heart but not quite looking up from her terminal.

Shepard rolled her neck. It didn't crack satisfyingly like it used to. "Yeah, it's good. But now that I have it, I need to ask you a question I've been putting off for a long time."

"Oh? You are welcome to use the terminal to access any of the Broker's information," said Liara, jerking her head at one of the terminals as she typed furiously on the screen in front of her.

"It's, uh, it's not anything like that," said Shepard. Something in her tone must have registered with Liara that this wasn't a routine visit, and she stopped typing and turned around.

"Of course. I apologize, I know I have a tendency to get caught up in work and neglect what is important." She strode over to the bed and sat down, holding out a hand for Shepard to sit beside her. After the past two weeks of being a hologram, Shepard was so used to aiming her animation that she blinked in surprise when her body actually physically sat on the bed. _Also, I blinked in surprise. Why did EDI even build the capacity to blink into this body? Thoughtful of her, I suppose._

They sat for a few moments in silence. After the moments turned into ten seconds, Shepard realized that Liara wasn't going to do anything other than wait for her to explain. She made a conscious choice to look Liara in the eyes.

"Ever since I...returned, everyone's been very accepting of me." She smiled. "Garrus looked for my off switch at first, but once I explained what had happened, that I had taken over all the reapers, you believed me." She paused for a moment. "That Shepard had taken over all the reapers."

Liara closed her eyes and nodded. "You are grateful that we have taken you at your word, but you harbor your own doubts."

Shepard nodded. "I feel like Shepard. I certainly think I'm her, but how would I know? Am I a person turned into an AI, or an AI who's convinced she's a person?"

Liara smiled gently. "I believe that Garrus would be able to tell if you were not you."

Shepard sighed. That one didn't work as well, with only the open mouth and no breath to exhale. "Would he? We both want me to be back so much I think we'd take any chance. But this is one gift varren I have to look in the mouth. I need to know, one way or the other. And I thought you would be the only one in a position to tell me, once and for all."

Liara didn't say anything, but after a moment she nodded. She reached out a hand to rest it on Shepard's head. _This feels weird. There are touch sensors even in the hair. Also, I hope I never get tired of this hairstyle._

Liara closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were black. She threw her head back, and after a minute, Shepard did the same, the exchange of thoughts too much to take unmoving.

Liara cried out and drew her hand away. After a moment, her eyes returned to their normal blue. She took a deep breath and smiled, carefully.

"I believe I now know what it is like to share consciousness with a reaper. It is… a difficult undertaking. I think I've already told you how much your mental fortitude surprises me."

Shepard leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. Without the muscle for them to dig into, they almost slid off. "My mental fortitude? So I'm still Shepard?"

Liara nodded. "Yes. Your mind is not exactly the same as it once was. You are calmer now, and your thoughts are larger. But some amount of change in one's mind is entirely to be expected. You are still you, Shepard."

Shepard sighed in relief, forgetting for the moment how unsatisfying sighing was going to be from now on. "Thank you, Liara. You've taken a load off my mind."

Liara stood and went back to the terminal. "After having felt the loads your mind is carrying, I am not entirely sure I am capable of that."

* * *

She ran into Kaidan just finishing dinner in the mess hall and walked with him back to his lounge, chatting idly.

"So, how's everything working? All systems operational?" He nodded at her, clearly meaning her new body.

"Yeah, everything I used to have and more. Well, except biotics."

Kaidan rested on the railing. "You sure you can't just get EDI to add you an amp port somewhere? She's an effective woman, I bet she could handle it in a matter of hours."

Shepard shook her head. "No good. There's nothing left to amplify. You know that tiny buzz behind your eyeballs, the one that wakes you up in the middle of the night and scratches the itch?" He nodded, and Shepard shrugged. "Gone."

He nodded contemplatively, staring out the window at the jungle. "Damn. I don't even remember what it was like, before my biotics surged."

Shepard smiled, a little bitterly. "Neither did I. It seems like a stupid thing to complain about, since I've gotten my life back more than any human in history, but it's infuriating to know that I'm not going to be able to have my biotics if I need them. I can still shoot, but if the galaxy needs saving again, it had better find a new Spectre. Maybe you can pick up my slack, Kaidan."

"I think you've saved it enough for now."

She nodded. "I hope it's enough. It's never seemed to be in the past."

Kaidan looked at her with a sad smile. "I'd offer you a beer, but, well…"

She clapped him on the shoulder. "Thanks, Kaidan. For listening, not for your theoretical beer."

He cupped his hand around an imaginary glass and raised it to her. "Cheers."

* * *

Vega whistled as she stepped out of the elevator. "Damn, Lola, I thought your old body couldn't get any better."

Shepard wiggled her fingers, like she was trying to get a glove on tighter. "It's nice. But I need to see if I can still walk the walk."

"You come down here to dance with me?" said Vega, still doing pullups.

"Hell no, I've been told pretty consistently that dancing isn't my strong suit. I came down here to fight you."

Vega dropped from the pull up bars and smiled. "One and the same, Lola." He strode into the middle of the room and brought his fists up. "But don't you have a metal-faced dinosaur lover or something? Why are you sparring with me?"

She raised her fists too. "Close quarters sparring can get a little too intimate with him. I need to test out this body. No distractions."

"You saying you don't find this distracting? I'm hurt, Lola."

"Not yet," said Shepard, punching at his stomach with all the strength she could muster. He moved his hand to try to block it, but he was too slow. The punch hit him in the gut and knocked him a full meter backwards. At first Shepard was worried that she'd seriously injured him, but he laughed. She did too. "Now you're hurt," she said.

He cracked his neck and came at her, feinting low and cracking her in the jaw. The blow connected, but it was Vega who swore and stumbled backwards after it, clutching his hands.

"That's one hell of a jaw you've got there, Lola."

Shepard shrugged, feeling the place he'd hit. The sensor pads on her fingertips weren't quite the same as real touch, but it did a decent job replacing it. Her jaw was cool and smooth, not even remotely dented where Vega had hit it.

"My jaw may be made of steel, but at least it's not the size of a Mako," said Shepard.

Vega grinned. "If you want a kiss all you have to do is ask nicely, Lola."

Shepard circled and punched a few times, lighter than she knew she could do. The point was only to keep the conversation going, after all.

"You really never stop flirting, do you?" she said, jabbing at his nose. He blocked with a forearm and punched back, slowing it before it landed out of sympathy for his knuckles. "Tell me, Vega, I know it's all a game with me, but is it with Cortez?"

"What, Esteban?" Vega asked. His voice was nonchalant, but Shepard noticed a little bit of pink in the top of his cheeks. "I just like giving him a hard time."

Shepard took advantage of his distraction to punch him in the jaw. Only about a third of her new strength, but it still drove him back. "Let me guess, Vega. You were one of the boys who tells a girl he likes her by pulling her hair."

For once, Vega didn't have anything to say. Instead, he swept out a leg in a kick that took the legs out from under her. He put a hand on her throat, pinning her to the ground. She had a sneaking suspicion that she might be strong enough now to stand up anyway, but she let him get away with it.

"Uncle," she said, and he offered a hand. She took it, standing up. "Thanks, Vega. That was just what I needed."

"Like you weren't a good enough brawler already." He strolled back over to his area and dropped to the floor. Pushups. "Have fun getting distracted with your dinosaur."

She smiled. "I will. And think about what I said, Vega. Asking somebody out for a drink never hurt anyone."

He just grunted and went back to his pushups.

* * *

Garrus rapped on Shepard's forehead with an unarmored knuckle. "Well, look at this. Three years of jokes about metal faces are running through my head. Forgive me if I take a minute to gloat."

Shepard raised an eyebrow- it was a miracle of engineering that EDI had managed to give whatever metal they used for the face the amount of flexibility needed to make a gesture like that.

"It seems to me your head hasn't really changed."

Garrus laughed. "Forgetting my scars already? It's like you don't even like me enough to come back from the dead."

"Twice," she corrected, and dipped her forehead forward. He met it, and sure enough, there was a faint clang. They both cracked up.

After a minute, she looked up at him, her face serious again. Well, probably. He'd gotten decent at reading human expressions from the past couple years, but even on humans who weren't making their expressions from robot faces, his perception wasn't perfect.

"Are...are you alright with this, Garrus? With me being synthetic?"

Garrus chuckled. "Shepard, this isn't even the first time you've died and come back to life with more machine in you than you had before."

Shepard smiled. "This is taking it to a bit of a new level, though."

Garrus shrugged and put a hand on her shoulder. God, it felt good to touch her again. "It was always an interspecies relationship; we're just playing for keeps now."

She smiled and wrapped a hand around his back. "Good. Because I've already stress-tested this body for fighting, but I think there's a lot more testing that needs doing." The corner of her mouth twisted up. "And I happen to know somebody who's pretty good at calibrations."

"Mmm. Well, you'd better call him up," Garrus murmured.

It was a good thing the Alliance made their beds sturdy, because they were in the mood for a lot of calibrations.

* * *

Garrus and Shepard got married. Whether they got legally married was a murkier question, organic-synthetic unions still being something of an open question, but by this point Shepard's return was well enough known that her fame could let them get away with pretty much anything. If nothing else, they set the precedent for any geth who wanted to get married in the future, although when it came down to it, neither of them was entirely sure if the new geth even would have any interest in that.

Their difference in species made procreation impossible even before Shepard became synthetic, so when their house in the tropics started to feel too empty, they looked to adopt. Garrus had been right; with the genophage cured, there were a lot of baby krogan around. Equally unsurprisingly, a krogan designed to be "pure" was a somewhat sought after mate, and Grunt ended up with about ten more kids than he knew what to do with. Most of them went to their mothers' clans to raise, but one was left over.

"I thought about being a father," Grunt confided to them, holding a silver-plated baby krogan wrapped in rough blankets. Garrus was fairly sure that the blanket, which was woven out of what looked like unravelled armor mesh, was the height of krogan seamstressing. "I thought about it too much. Made my third kidney start twitching, and I trust my third kidney. I was thinking of who to give it to, and I thought of my battlemaster." He pounded his chest in Shepard's general direction, holding the baby in one hand as he did. Garrus didn't actively reach out to catch it, but he wasn't putting his hands anywhere they couldn't move in a hurry either. "Besides, he's got a metal head. Reminded me of you, turian."

They took the baby, that very day. They spent days researching on the extranet what sort of preparations to make for a baby krogan, but considering baby krogan were a nearly secret commodity until a couple of years ago, information was scarce. It turns out they needn't have bothered. The baby, who they named Anderson- the winner by a small margin of the extensive pool of fallen friends to pick names from- was almost as indestructible as his adoptive mother. One time, reaching for Daddy's favorite rifle, the one hanging above the fireplace that he Must Never Touch, Anderson managed to fall off of the fireplace and land directly on one of the fire pokers. It pierced one of his lungs, but he had plenty of those to spare. He was out of the hospital within a week.

They sent him to an asari boarding school when he was old enough, moved him to one of the newly-established krogan ones when it became clear that he wasn't going to stop pushing his classmates off buildings and claiming that he couldn't be put in detention because "my parents saved the galaxy and my mom is a bunch of space monsters sometimes." He passed krogan military training with flying colors, a source of both pride and worry to his doting parents, and got an impressive first posting commanding one of the krogan pushes to take Zorya from Blue Suns' control.

* * *

In 2219, Garrus was diagnosed with Corpalis Syndrome, the disease that killed his mother. Late stage, most likely fatal within three years. Modern science was working on it, but they were still 20 years from a cure- they always seemed to be 20 years from a cure. Shepard dove into the collective racial consciousnesses of reaper after reaper, the memories a level of alien that Shepard still couldn't really understand even after all these years, but she couldn't find anything. It was a turian disease, and none of the long-dead civilizations inside the reapers were turians. She missed Chakwas.

"It's funny," said Garrus one day, sitting in their house in the tropical belt of Sur'Kesh. "Every firefight I've ever been in since I left C-Sec and met you- and that's a lot, mind you, you get me into a lot of trouble- I've always assumed I would probably die. And that was fine by me. I've always rather liked the idea of dying in battle, fighting for what's right. One of the only things the Hierarchy got right in me." He coughed. "And now I'm dying of a damn cough."

"Come on, I know what you need," Shepard said, and she picked one of the rifles off of the wall and tossed it to him. "Shooting gallery. Better than self-pity and therapy rolled into one."

Shepard threw the discs- she always did, since her mechanical arms could get a better trajectory than Garrus could, even before he fell sick. He has still a good sniper, but sometimes his hands shook. She'd started letting him win. She was pretty sure he knew, but he was still too proud to say anything about it.

* * *

In 2221, the first of Shepard's time bombs went off. It started as a simple territorial squabble over the colonization rights for Mollt, a small habitable world on the fringes of both rachni and krogan space. It only took a week for it to break out into a full-scale war.

Shepard and Garrus sent message after message to Anderson, pleading him just to check in with them. They didn't hear anything back. All they knew was that he was stationed on Oddast, one of the newer krogan colonies. It was contested territory, and they knew it was only a matter of time until the rachni attacked it. For the first time since the last of the relays had been fixed, Shepard activated one of the reapers, driving it off of the permanent holding docks on some moon in the Hades Nexus to watch the skies for incoming ships.

Four days into the war, the reaper's sensors pinged, and Shepard looked out of its empty eyes. A rachni vessel, dreadnought class, heading directly for Oddast.

Unthinking, Shepard let her humanoid body fall to the ground, temporarily unoccupied. Garrus struggled out of bed and shook the body's shoulder, but Shepard didn't feel a thing. She poured herself into the reaper, strained at the bounds of its long range sensors, and picked up the faint residue of arming nukes in the rachni ship's cargo hold. 1000 km and closing.

"Stand down," she called, the sound not emitting from the reaper to be lost in space but rather transmitted to every ship within 5000 kilometers. "Stand down!"

The rachni vessel ignored the order and kept flying toward Oddast. 800 km.

Shepard pulled back the blinds from the reaper's center eye, the one she distantly remembered firing a targeting laser at on the untouched stones of Rannoch, before it had any buildings, farms, or processing units. "I will shoot you out of the air. Stand down!"

500 km. Either the rachni vessel didn't hear her or it thought she was bluffing. 400 km.

She wasn't bluffing.

It only took one blast from the laser to take down the ship's shields. You only need one shot to take down an enemy carrying explosives. The rachni vessel had fifty armed nukes. If she had been watching the explosion with organic eyes, she would have been blinded.

As it was, she kept firing, not out of any fear the vessel had survived but rather to vaporize the fragments of the exploded hull before they could fall to the surface of Oddast.

She paused for long enough to reactivate her body, reassure Garrus, and help him back into bed. She didn't deactivate the reaper.

It was less than a day when the next waves came. The rachni came for the next push, or for revenge, whichever came first. The krogan came to take advantage of the rachni's loss. And the reaper- Shepard- was caught in the middle.

"Don't shoot! I will blow up the homeworld of any vessel that shoots!"

The rachni didn't respond except to hold off firing, at least temporarily, but the comm hub inside the reaper buzzed, and she heard Wrex's voice. _I knew I put the communications codes for interfacing with a reaper on the extranet for a reason._

"Come on, Shepard, we all know whose side you're on. You blew one of them up already, now help us finish your work and take the advantage."

The reaper didn't have any legs to back up on, but she felt like taking a step back all the same. "I'm not on anyone's side. I just want peace."

"You've got a funny way of showing it, Shepard. Just admit it, you're on our side. Might as well own up to it. I always said those reaper guns weren't just there for show."

This time Shepard actually did engage thrusters and push the reaper's hulking carapace back a few kilometers, out from between the two fleets. Wrex's transmission kept coming.

"You can't just watch everything happen for millenia and not do anything to help. You're a hero, Shepard, and heroes can never stand to sit back and let the galaxy go to hell, not while they can stop it. You're a reaper, Shepard. Get out there and reap!"

 _He's right. I can't. But that's my problem, and I can't make the galaxy pay just because I can't stop thinking of myself as judge, jury, and executioner._ She hadn't even lived to the end of a human lifetime, but all of a sudden she felt unbearably old. _Reapers are immortal, so this is all I have to look forward to. Unless I end it, I'll be pulled into every conflict, every major decision from here until forever. And what's the galaxy going to do if they disagree with me? Rebuild the crucible? I know better than anyone that there are no good solutions there._

 _I can't go on like this. I can't be allowed to._

She broadcast the next message out as far as she could send it, which probably meant everywhere this side of the mass relay.

"I don't want you to fight, but I won't stop you. It's not my place. I should go."

She pulled her consciousness out of the reaper and did her best to ignore its sensor readings as the first ship started firing. EDI had been right, all those years ago. It was like humming to block out background noise. But humming worked better when you had a tune.

* * *

The tune she chose was obvious. She took care of Garrus, who was too weak now to even stand without her synthetic body to help him, most days. She cut off inputs from all of the reapers, not just the one she'd left floating in the crossfire. She couldn't trust herself to be impartial. She couldn't trust herself at all. The sensor readings kept coming, but she just hummed louder. Her world had narrowed to Garrus and their home in the tropics.

Over the next week, there was a small parade of visitors. Shepard only granted audience to their closest friends, but when you've saved the galaxy and negotiated treaties with as many species as they had, that number gets up there. Liara read them a few selections from a book of truly awful elcor poetry that one of her particularly bored agents had intercepted. Jack offered to show off her new tattoo, which said 'The Police Fuck Themselves" and was located "right on my left ass cheek, because you two are such fucking asskissers." She was declined, but showed them anyway, wrinkly old lady ass and all. Tali set up a tea party for the both of them, with separate dextro and levo teacakes, sipping her tea through her mouth instead of through an "emergency induction port." Cortez came by and apologized that Admiral Vega couldn't make it today, since it was his turn to babysit the grandkids, but that he'd been instructed to give Shepard either a kiss or a kick, "whichever she seems to need more". Vega came by the next day to complain that Cortez had picked the wrong one, but he was in his sixties now, and Shepard had been better than him even before she became eternally young and got the strength of three Vegas, so he just ended up wrapping Shepard in a bearhug and trading wildly exaggerated war stories with Garrus. EDI visited and did her best to retell some of the jokes Jeff had taught her. It had been years since he died, but she still wore his SR-2 hat, even if it had a tendency to slide down her polished head. Grunt came by with Anderson, and they hinted that Anderson had gotten an auspicious posting somewhere, but they didn't say any more than that. Grunt called Shepard battlemaster, conversationally told Garrus that he wasn't really tempted to rip his faceplate off and crush it beneath his boot anymore, and passed along best wishes from Wrex and Eve, who were too involved in the war effort to come personally.

And everyone brought gifts. Kasumi brought a piece of stolen hanar artwork that she said reminded her of them. Traynor brought a chess board "just in case." Samara, Kaidan, Jacob, Ken and Gabby, Miranda, Doctor Michel, even the asari councillor, still holding the same position she had held before Shepard had become the first human spectre, and in all likelihood would hold for another five hundred years. Aria didn't come herself, but even she sent an expensive gift basket full of the highest end sniper rifles money could smuggle.

All the visitors followed the strict house rules of no news about the war. None of them mentioned why that house rule existed. None of them told Shepard she shouldn't do it either. They knew what needed to be done, and they were saying their goodbyes while they could.

* * *

Garrus laughed and made fun of every visitor, but his barbs were getting weaker. When it came to the morning of his last day, they both knew it.

They sat up in bed, propped up on pillows. Shepard reached through the hole in the back of his that all male turians had to have for their crests and rubbed the back of his neck.

He turned to her. "Here I am, faceplate weathered into sandpaper, and you still look like you did in your full hero days. It's like I'm married to a damn asari."

"There's an easy way to test that. Play me a good dance track and give me a pole, and I'll see where my asari rhythm takes me."

He coughed. "Good thing I'm dying already, because I'm pretty sure that mental image just took a year off my life."

She elbowed him, not hard. He smiled, and said, "Well, it looks like I'm winning the who dies first competition after all. You keep trying to beat me, but I'm onto your tricks. You can't out-stubborn a turian, you know. We're famously hard headed, even the bad turians like me. Comes with the metal face."

Shepard shook her head, smiling. "Do me a favor and have a drink waiting for me up in that bar, okay?"

He chuckled weakly. "You think you'll be back in your original body, or should I make it motor oil?"

She laughed. "Better make it one of each."

His eyes fluttered closed. "There you go, using your commander voice on me again."

She nestled closer to him. "I haven't been your commander in decades, Garrus."

"You'll always be my commander."

His eyes closed once more. They didn't open again.

* * *

The reapers awoke as one, flying up from the planet where she had hidden them away. It felt strange to control all of them again. Their thoughts were still alien, but that didn't matter anymore. There was no room for thoughts where she was taking them.

Any sufficiently hot star would do, but she picked the one on Hoc, the system Virmire was in. It seemed fitting to put an end to the reaper fleet in the same system she had first truly realized it. It wasn't as though distance was of particular importance to a reaper.

She didn't even have to calculate a course into the sun. She just flew, as natural as walking. She couldn't dampen the sensors enough to block out the radio chatter of every passing ship and planet seeing the full vanguard of the reapers flying for the first time since they had fixed the relays forty years ago, but she didn't mind. Curiosity was just a fact of the life she was leaving behind.

If she still had a mouth, it would be smiling. She didn't. She had left that body lying under Garrus' limp arm on their bed in the tropics. The next visitor to stop by would find them like that, both of them with their eyes closed like they were sleeping. She had considered sticking around long enough to arrange the funeral, but Garrus never had seen the point in funerals, and she'd had her fair share and then some already. Besides, she had put this off for too long as it was.

 _Can't be me anymore. I'll only get it wrong._

The first of the reapers dissolved in the sun's heat. Then the next. It was a nonstop parade of cessation, and as each one disintegrated, her thoughts got easier, less clouded by unknowably ancient alien minds.

She was burning up, hundreds of bodies cracking and frying with the heat and the pressure. She felt a buzzing behind eyes she didn't even have anymore, and wanted to smile again.

 _You'd better be waiting with that drink in hand, Garrus._

The last reaper disintegrated into ash, and Commander Shepard was no more.


End file.
